Bringing back a classic episode with my friend, biohacker Ben Greenfield. We discuss the top performance tips that Ben is implementing now to build and maintain muscle. Ben walks us through his typical day, from his sleep schedule, to what foods he’s eating and when. We’ll hear the new devices he’s using, what metrics he loves tracking, and which products he’s especially loving now. We’ll also hear how he balances life and work, mitigates stress, and how he gets his own kids to eat, live, sleep, and perform like their dad. This conversation does not disappoint, so grab a pen and notebook because there are some amazing tips in here that Ben will be sharing with you today.
More about Ben Greenfield:
Ben is an author, speaker, coach, podcaster, and founder and CEO of Kion, where Ben creates step-by-step solutions, from supplements and fitness gear, to coaching and consulting, to education and media for the world’s hard-charging high achievers to live a truly limitless life with fully-optimized minds, bodies, and spirits. Whether you want to become the complete mental athlete with a flawless brain and nervous system, attain an ideal human body that fires on all cylinders, from performance, to beauty, to hormones, and beyond, or achieve true and lasting health, happiness, and longevity, Ben combines intense time in the trenches with ancestral wisdom and modern science to make your dreams a reality.
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Dr. Pompa:
Hey, I want to tell you about one of our sponsors, CytoDetox. Look, podcasts cost money. There’s a lot of production going around this but we are grateful to have CytoDetox as one of the sponsors. It’s so easy for me to talk about the product because myself and my family use it constantly as we practice what I preach. For over 15 years, I have talked about and taught doctors and the public about cellular detox and I’ll tell you, Cyto was a breakthrough. Cyto was a breakthrough for us and its changed so many lives so we’re grateful that they sponsor Cellular Healing TV. It makes sense, doesn’t it? They should.
Ashley:
If you’re listening to this podcast and want to access the amazing CytoDetox product Dr. Pompa just mentioned, please visit detoxoffer.com. Again, that’s detoxoffer.com.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I am Ashley Smith and today, we’re bringing back a classic episode with friend of the show, biohacker Ben Greenfield. He and Dr. Pompa discussed the top performance tips that Ben is implementing now to build and maintain muscle. Ben walks us through his typical day. From his sleep schedule to what foods he’s eating and when. We’ll hear the new devices he’s using. What metrics he loves tracking and which products he’s especially loving now. We’ll also hear how he balances life and work, mitigate stress, and how he gets his own kids to eat, live, sleep and perform like their dad. This conversation does not disappoint. Grab a pen and notebook because there are some amazing tips in here that Ben will be sharing with you today. Thank you so much for joining. Welcome to Cell TV.
Dr. Pompa:
Ben, welcome to Cell TV, man. You are someone who I just love and adore, so I am excited for today’s show.
Ben:
Thank you. That’s kind of creepy, actually.
Dr. Pompa:
I love and adore you and your wife. Oh, there she is. Tell her to come here.
Ben:
Don’t hang my poster on your ceiling or anything like that.
Dr. Pompa:
She doesn’t want to come. I’m like, come on, come on. Darn. I had her. I had her. Jessa was there.
Ben:
Oh, you mean in my office just now? That actually wasn’t.
Dr. Pompa:
She walked in the room.
Ben:
No, that wasn’t Jessa that just walked through. My basement flooded a couple of days ago, and so we’re doing a remediation analysis or whatever for insurance.
Dr. Pompa:
It looked like her, man. I’m telling you. It looked like her. Again, she was across the room, so I saw the back of someone’s head.
Ben:
Random women just walk into my office all day long. It’s weird. It’s creepy.
Dr. Pompa:
Anyways, yeah. That did look like her. I saw the back of her again right there. Listen, we love you guys. When you come to Park City, you stay with us, and we just got to be really good friends. Ben, I have to say, I want my viewers and listeners just to know a little bit about who you are. I’m going to start here. Who came to your house to interview you? I forget what it was for. It was for some type of documentary or some type of piece. Who was it?
Ben:
What was the context?
Dr. Pompa:
It was the one where Jessa was actually interviewed at the end.
Ben:
Okay, yeah. That was Men’s Health magazine. They did something called, “Down the Stem Cell Rabbit Hole,” because I got my dick injected with stem cells, and they wanted to do a follow-up story on that and all these male sexual enhancement procedures that Men’s Health sent me on this three-month foray to do. They sent the film crew to my house and they’re tracking me all over the house, shining laser lights on my balls, and doing all these crazy things. They even had me order up stem cells and inject them intravenously to show somebody doing this at home. Then they interviewed my wife after they show me—
Dr. Pompa:
They showed you doing all your things. You wake up in the morning.
Ben:
All this crazy stuff, yes.
Dr. Pompa:
You wake up in the morning, and I’m going to have you tell them what your day looks like. It’s this arduous thing. They get to your wife and they say, well, basically, go ahead, take it from there. After they see you doing all of these things throughout the day, they ask your wife a question.
Ben:
I forget. It was something along the lines of, dude—are you referring to, damn, do you do any of this stuff?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, right. What do you do? Do you do all this stuff? Her comment was, are you kidding me? I can’t even imagine waking up every day with a list, hot, cold, injections.
Ben:
She’s the complete opposite. She lays down in bed and just goes to sleep. She doesn’t work out. She plays tennis every now and again. Sometimes she’ll just not eat all day. I’ll be like, oh, are you fasting? Are you doing a fasting protocol? She’s like no, I just didn’t eat yet. She doesn’t plan anything. She just randomly stays healthy with zero planning at all. She’s also the type of person who, if you send her an email, she might read 20 percent of the emails in her inbox, and she’s got 200 unread messages on her phone. That’s her; she’s Type B. I’m the complete opposite.
Dr. Pompa:
My wife, they fell in love.
Ben:
There’s one box I haven’t checked that needs to be taken care of before I’m going to sit down to lunch like that and she’s the total opposite. I’m glad because I’ve hung out before with—not to sound judgmental, God loves everybody. I’ve hung out with couples who Ironman triathletes or couples who are Crossfitters or couples who are biohackers. I’m like, it would drive me nuts if Jessa was the same as me.
Dr. Pompa:
No, it’s true. Merily brings balance to me as well. Okay, yeah. She is the exact opposite, so let’s look at Ben Greenfield. Ben, tell them your day. You get up in the morning. Go.
Ben:
Oh, you want to go through my day. Okay. I typically wake up and I do gratitude journaling. I write down one thing I’m grateful for, one person who I can pray or help or serve that day, and then one truth that I discovered in the morning’s devotional reading or scripture. While I do that, I measure my sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system using a heart rate variability app called NatureBeat. I also do a quick review of my sleep scores with this ring, the Oura ring. Then I go downstairs, and I get the water for the coffee started up. Typically, I turn off all my sleep stuff. I sleep on a BioBalance PEMF mat, which is covered with a chiliPAD, which actually seems to increase the strength of that pulsed electromagnetic field. Then I turn off my essential oil diffuser because I diffuse lavender while I’m asleep.
Dr. Pompa:
What are you diffusing right there? You’re diffusing something right now.
Ben:
Oh, you can see it?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.
Ben:
That’s rosemary. I keep rosemary, peppermint, and cinnamon as the three primary essentially oils in my office. I have this assistant who lives in my house. Just helps out with lots of stuff. I just have her surprise me. I tell her, hey, you know the rules, keep them full but the bedroom has to have the relaxing ones and the office has to have the stimulating ones. Anyways, then I turn off the binaural beats because they use binaural beats when I’m asleep as well. Once I shut down all that stuff, I get out of bed, I head downstairs. While the coffee water is on, I do about 15 minutes of self-care. It gives me a lot of momentum going into the day and I live the day in a state of low-level physical activity. I like to just start off by stretching everything out, foam rolling anything that’s sore. Sometimes, I hang from a yoga trapeze or an inversion table. I have a Pedicon neck traction device.
Dr. Pompa:
I’ve seen you doing coffee enemas upside down from your trapeze.
Ben:
With the trapeze, usually, if you see me hanging from the trapeze, it’s a probiotic enema. I do a probiotic enema about once a month. I do a coffee enema once a week. That probiotic enema seeds the colon better if you hang upside down for a while, whereas the coffee enema’s better just laying on your right side for about 20 minutes or so.
Dr. Pompa:
Stop right there. Where can people find these—because people are going, I want to do that. I want to do that. Where do they find that stuff, Ben?
Ben:
Honestly, I blog about it pretty intensively over at bengreenfieldfitness.com.
Dr. Pompa:
There you go, bengreenfieldfitness.com. Okay, continue.
Ben:
The morning routines you’ve just alluded to varies. Every Wednesday morning, for example, rather than doing the foam rolling or the self-body care massage, I instead do rebounding and a bunch of charcoal, and a coffee enema, and then a sauna. I have a weekly mini detox that I do all year long to clear the body.
Dr. Pompa:
You do CytoDetox as well.
Ben:
Yeah. I use CytoDetox, but I space that from the charcoal. On a morning like that, I’ll get up, take CytoDetox, and then it’ll be an hour and a half or so. Then I take the charcoal as a binder, and then I go and do a coffee enema. Then I’ll go in the sauna after that. That’s how a typical detox morning would look like for me. I’m not completely unproductive in that time. If I’m laying on my right side doing a coffee enema, I’ll be dicking around on my phone, replying to emails. I try and stay productive when I do this stuff. Anyways, so I do all the self-body care while the coffee’s on and then I grab my coffee.
I go down to my office, and I spend about the first 20 to 30 minutes of my day writing because for me, as an author—I say author because I sometimes feel like a true author should be writing all day and instead for me, I write for 20 to 30 minutes a day because that’s all the time I have by the time I’ve got podcasts and travel and speaking and everything else going on. While I’m writing, I’ll typically have this on doing photo biomodulation.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s the Joovv light which I’ve done shows on. Why do you do that? Tell them why you do that.
Ben:
Red and near infrared light for activation of the cytochrome c oxidase and mitochondria for release of nitric oxide, for a little bit of collagen and skin health. Like I alluded to earlier, I pull down my pants and I shine on my testicles to activate the Leydig cells in the testes.
Dr. Pompa:
I did it this morning.
Ben:
For sperm, for testosterone, it’s really good for that. While I am in my office in the morning, because I travel pretty intensively, I usually will also use light therapy. I’ll put in the HumanCharger. I’ll put on glasses like this. The Re-Timer glasses that you can flip on and shine green-blue light at the eyes. Then I also have something called a Vielight, which is more targeted photobiomodulation. It looks like this. It’s like a light panel for your skull. I’ll wear that about every [00:11:29].
Dr. Pompa:
In the interview, Men’s Health thing, the piece they did, you had that on your head. You were on the bike.
Ben:
Yeah. I do a lot of light therapy while I’m drinking my coffee and while I’m writing. The other thing that I’ll use, and you can’t see it here, but I have something called a NanoVi next to my desk here. It’s like a tube. I could probably get the tube up here, so you could at least see that. It’s basically a nasal cannula. This generates a small amount of reactive oxygen species. What that does is—it’s like mild hormesis. It enhances cellular resilience, steps ups DNA repair a little bit, and I’ll often have that in in the morning as well.
Dr. Pompa:
Why do you do all this? Look, just in a very quick, brief thing, why do you do all this light therapy? If you had to say, here’s some quick benefits.
Ben:
Mitochondrial health, nitric oxide release, activation of cytochrome c oxidase which is basically related to mitochondrial health, collagen, skin, blood flow to the brain. There’s some effect on thyroid tissue. There’s even some effect on maintenance of muscle, some effect on lipolysis. There’s a mild detoxification effect as tissue is heated. There’s just a variety of benefits and I just can’t go out in sunshine to work on my computer and write stuff in the morning. Honestly, the thing about red and near-infrared light and some of these more targeted forms of photobiomodulation is, you’re really taking a lot of the positive aspects of sunlight that you’d be looking for anyways if you’d go out in the sun and you’re concentrating them in higher doses, so that you’re getting more of that in a shorter period of time.
There’s a lot of things I don’t consider to be biohacking. I don’t consider putting butter in your smoothie or let’s say—what would be another example—or taking ketones or something like that to be a biohack. I consider that to be just like cooking and eating. I do consider anything that shortcuts a natural biological reaction that you’re going after to be a biohack. Photobiomodulation I would consider to be basically morning biohacking.
Dr. Pompa:
If there was one of all the light things that you use that our viewers—you think that everyone would benefit from, which one would it be?
Ben:
It depends, but I would say, if you’re somebody who’s on the go a lot, I would just get a Joovv Mini because you can travel with it. You get red light. You get near infra-red light. The Vielight, the one for your head I like but it doesn’t really target the rest of the body at all. Whereas the Joovv Mini, you could use that on your genitals. You could use it on your face. You could use it on your eyes. It’s great for the retina. There’s a lot of benefits and it’s portable.
Dr. Pompa:
We’ll make sure, folks, we put that in the show notes. That you can access one of those. What Ben’s talking about.
Ben:
My kids have the Joovv Mini up in their bedroom. It’s cute. They have a Mini BioMat and a Mini Joovv, so they get a bunch of infrared. They get a bunch of negative ions. They get their near-infrared and red light. They’re on board with a lot of this stuff that I do as well. They have their little essential oil diffusers. They’re healthy, healthy young kids. They sleep amazingly and they have really good scores at school. They’re just really emotionally stable. I think part of it is because they have good mitochondrial health and they take care of their brain and their bodies.
Dr. Pompa:
The way they eat. You all practice what you preach, just like Merily and I. Okay, we’re part-way through the day. Folks, I’m telling you. This is what Ben does every day. I’m telling you.
Ben:
No, we’re not partway through the day. We’re at like 7:30 in the morning.
Dr. Pompa:
We got to speed it up, Ben.
Ben:
Yeah, we should speed it up. Anyways, I am a firm believer in activation of the parasympathetic nervous system in the morning. Unless you’re so busy and you’re traveling, and your only chance to get a hard workout in, if you really are trying to build muscle or you’re trying—let’s say, you’ve signed up for a marathon or an Ironman or a Spartan race or something like that. Yeah, sometimes you have to do an unnatural amount of physical exercise, whereas our ancestors wouldn’t have necessarily done a WOD. Sometimes, if you are wanting to train or you are wanting to put on muscle or you are—I mean, even for me personally, I, for some of my workouts, push myself harder than what I know to be good for my body.
I cross that threshold of a little bit of excess oxidation and a little bit of pushing myself too hard. Even my body fat is probably about 3% to 5% lower than what I consider to be naturally healthy for ultimate fertility and longevity and cell membrane health, et cetera. However, I also understand that in the industry that I’m in, in the health and fitness and nutrition industry, a lot of times you are judged by how you look with your shirt off or how fast you go on a Spartan race or something like that. I do a hard workout typically at the end of the day and I don’t think that’s necessary for health. I think that’s more of a performance thing or if you’re like me and part of your paycheck depends on—and I don’t want to sound narcissistic or something but ripping your shirt off for a photo shoot or something like that. I actually have to maintain muscle.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s your world. My world’s [00:17:03].
Ben:
It’s my schtick. I still operate in an environment where I’m judged by my body. I accept that and I still push myself with a hard workout. I don’t do that at the beginning of the day typically. I do something easy at the beginning of the day because you already have a natural cortisol release. Coffee amps that up even more. Typically, for me, I will do a sauna, a walk in the sunshine. I love cold water swims and we live near the Spokane River. Sometimes I’ll go down there and toss the paddle board in the water for about 20 minutes then jump in and just tread water in the cold for 5, 10 minutes. I like to ease into the day with physical activity and that’s typically after I’ve had my coffee and done my writing and my light therapy. After I’ve taken my morning dump.
Then I go off and I do about 20 to 30 minutes of light physical activity. At that point, I start my day. Meaning that I really jump into work intensively. I’m a firm believer in this idea of deep work and the concept that you can typically engage in about four to five hours of deep, focused work each day. From about 9:30 or 10:00 AM until about 2:00 PM, I work really hard. I’ll do interviews like we’re doing right now. I do a lot of podcasts. I do a lot of additional writing. Typically, not my book, which is all the morning stuff but articles. Anything that involves deep, focused work. I save a lot of my email responses and stuff like that for my more reactive time, which is typically the afternoon or the early evening.
Dr. Pompa:
I do the same thing.
Ben:
Yeah, I do deep work. If I’ve had a very physically active evening the night prior, meaning I’ve done a hard workout, a glycogen-depleting weight training workout the night prior or I have already anticipated a very busy day and I’ve done a hard workout that morning, I’ll have breakfast. Typically, for me, it’s just a smoothie. I eat low to no carbohydrates.
Dr. Pompa:
Otherwise, you fast. You intermittent fast.
Ben:
I fast or I do like I do right now. Typically, a little bit of ketones. Ketone salts or ketone esters, and amino acids. 9 times out of 10, if I’m not eating breakfast like I didn’t do this morning, I will just be on amino acids and ketones.
Dr. Pompa:
Again, we have different goals. You live in the fitness world. Me, I don’t do amino acids because I want to keep my autophagy maximized and there’s room for both. We’re going to talk about—
Ben:
I’ve tried both and I can do fine with just water and minerals for a morning fast. What happens is, once I do jump in to that hard workout because I’m still training and racing as a professional athlete, for me to throw down a workout, which is typically going to occur between about 5:00 and 7:00 PM or so in the later afternoon or the early evening, if I completely skip breakfast, even if I’ve had lunch, that workout is not as good. My performance is not as good later on in the day.
It does take about eight hours or so for some glycogen restoration to occur, for restoration of things like acetylcholine and some neurotransmitters that get exhausted during exercise to replenish, for ATP to replenish, for creatine phosphate to replenish. Hard-charging athletes who skip breakfast but don’t perhaps replace some of the precursors that they need for exercise in the morning, tend to not have as good of a workout.
Dr. Pompa:
When you train at the level you train at, the demands are so high. It’s abnormal. Therefore, you need more of these precursors, so I agree.
Ben:
Hence, why I’ll at least use amino acids and ketones. I work all day. Then typically, around 2:00, take a break, have some lunch. For me, it’s usually a big salad. While I’m working, I’m doing things like you’re seeing me do now, walking on my treadmill, doing dictation. I’ll stop every once in a while. I’ll do some kettle bell swings or I’ll go outside in ground or earth or get a little sunlight. Typically, I’ll turn on my phone during those Pomodoro breaks. While I’m outside, listen to any [00:21:11] or make sure there’s no fires I need put out and go back in and jump back into my deep work. After I have lunch, I take a nap. I’m a big believer in naps, especially for athletes.
It almost gives me two days. I wake up and I’m just ready to charge into this extra day I’ve created for myself versus slogging through the latter half of the day. A little bit depleted from all that hard work I did in the morning. I take a nap. Typically, I take a nap on a BioMat, so I’m getting a little bit more infrared and some negative ions from the amethyst and the tourmaline crystals that are in the BioMat. I wear these NormaTec graduated compression boots that basically compress your legs. They’re amazing. I pull those on, I put on some essential oil, and I just crash out for 20 to 45 minutes.
Dr. Pompa:
Really healthy.
Ben:
Occasionally, I’ll use audio-visual entrainment. For example, I have a Mind Alive DAVID Delight Pro that you can use to lull yourself into a pretty deep state of delta relaxation. I find that that enhances the nap even more. It even has cranio-electrical stimulation on it that will allow for a little decrease in cortisol. There’s another similar device—
Dr. Pompa:
A nap in the afternoon. Sometimes I’ll even just lay on [00:22:32] and fall completely asleep, putting myself in that sympathetic mode. I play the Wholetones.
Ben:
Wholetones by Michael Tyrrell. Those are amazing. As a matter of fact—
Dr. Pompa:
I did a show on it. I interviewed him. My people put that up, folks. It does what you’re saying. It puts you in that delta, deep sleep. You can get 15, 20 minutes and you play the Wholetones. Yeah, you can [00:23:00].
Ben:
Wednesdays are my big self-love day. I start off the day with that detoxification protocol that I talked about. I skip my nap on Wednesdays for this reason. It’s related to this Wholetones thing because at about 8:30 on Wednesday nights, I have a massage therapist come over to my house. I lay on this giant pulsed electromagnetic field mat made by a company called Pulse Centers that I keep in my basement. It’s sandwiched on either side by these speakers. I blast myself with sound therapy using usually Michael Tyrell’s Wholetones or his Life, Love & Lullabies tracks and do the PEMF and she works on me. It’s just like a full-body reboot. Between that and the morning sauna, enema routine.
Wednesdays, I push the reboot button on the body every single Wednesday. After my lunchtime nap, I get up. My kids get home from school about 4:00, so that gives me time to do about another hour and a half of emails and responsive work. When the kids get home, typically, I’m with them. I’m a firm believer in this idea that even though it can be smart to outsource your child’s education to people who can do a better job at teaching them specific skills than you might be able to, and I also think that at school, they can learn how to play well with others, they can learn how to do well with group environments, they can learn how to cooperate, I was homeschooled K through 12. I still have a little bit of a weakness in terms of group cooperation, in terms of following verses always needing to lead, that lone-wolf mentality.
I would rather my kids get the best of both worlds. Be able to learn and operate in group environments but then also be able to function independently as a resilient, free-thinking young men. Because of that, when they get home from school, typically, that’s the time when we’re delving into me bringing them to Jiu-Jitsu or us going out and shooting arrows or doing plant foraging or learning skills that they would not learn at school. We do meditation sit spots. We’ll play tennis. Just all these little independent things that I want them to learn from me. I’ll typically spend time doing with them when they get home from school.
Like I mentioned, sometime between 5:00 and 7:00 PM, I jump into an evening workout. That’s usually about 40 to 60 minutes long. Some [00:25:34], some cardio, some HIIT, et cetera. It all depends. Once that workout is over, I’ll usually fast for a good hour and a half. We eat dinner late. I don’t think that that’s ideal for circadian rhythm. It’s just the way our days work. We usually don’t eat dinner until about 8:30. I’m usually done working out around 7:00. Research shows that if you finish a hard workout at least 3 hours before bedtime, and we typically go to bed about 10:00, you have enhanced deep sleep levels. I try to finish up my workout by 7:00.
I will sometimes have a digest tea for a bit or some form of alcohol after the workout just because my liver glycogen is depleted, and so that fructose just tends to go towards liver glycogen restoration rather than spilling over as triglycerides into the blood stream. If I’m going to have alcohol or a drink, I actually have it post-workout. Let’s say I finish working around 7:00, by 7:30 I’m down in my office, and I’m having a little drink and I’m going through the last emails of the day. Typically, our family will eat around 8:00 or 8:30. If I’m going to eat any carbohydrates, I don’t eat any carbohydrates at all the entire day and at the very end of the day, I will replenish muscle glycogen and liver glycogen with a drink and typically some kind of carbohydrate with dinner, whether that’s sweet potatoes or yams or rice.
Dr. Pompa:
I agree. My afternoon meal, I eat protein and fat, and then my evening meal is where I’ll eat my carbohydrates.
Ben:
I eat a lot of plant. We have a huge garden and I go out there for lunch and just pick kale and Swiss chard and carrots and a lot of plants and herbs and spices.
Dr. Pompa:
Some people do it the opposite. I find it’s just works better for me, for sure. I like to burn my glycogen out through the day and then replace it.
Ben:
Yeah, and you also get a big serotonin release at the end of the day, so you sleep better.
Dr. Pompa:
I tend to sleep better. Folks, how we know that is that Oura ring. You can measure your sleep to see really how you get better in deep sleep I find the same as Ben. All right, so that is Ben Greenfield, man. You heard it. I’m not kidding. When they came and did the interview, they really made him look like a lunatic because he does all these things. Then there’s Jessa at the end going, are you kidding me? Who could do that?
Ben:
Her day, too. She’s pushing a wheelbarrow around in a garden, gardening, weeding, carrying rocks, carrying alfalfa down to our goats. Her whole day, she’s outside, grounded, earthed, in the sunlight. Admittedly, she lives a more natural, ancestral lifestyle than I do based on all of that. Whereas I’m working as an author, a blogger, a podcaster, fighting this constant uphill battle against the EMF and the radiation I get when I’m flying. Even though we’ve got our whole house hardwired with Ethernet so there’s no Wi-Fi, we’ve done a lot of EMF mitigation. We’ve done a lot of light mitigation strategies. We’ve got a really good water setup, et cetera.
With the amount of travel I do, I still have to be pretty careful to a certain extent, use these hacks to keep myself healthy. I also don’t want to sound like a wounded healer or something but I’ve done some pretty extensive genetic testing and I don’t produce a lot of superoxide dismutase. I don’t produce a lot of Vitamin D even in response to sunlight. I’m an APOE e34. I’ve got a lot of little genetic things going on that require me to pay a little bit closer attention to my health compared to my wife who is basically—she’s genetically flawless. Her bloodwork is flawless. She’s got these hard Montana rancher genes. She’s lucky.
Dr. Pompa:
I agree. She is flawless in every way. She’s amazing. I say the same about my wife. My wife’s cellular age is she’s a teenager. I just got to keep up, man.
Ben:
There’s that and then you and I also have this responsibility to try a lot of this stuff and to be first adopters of a lot of this technology and bio hacks, and health strategies. I get people who just want to freaking know how to repopulate their colon with good flora and what a probiotic enema is. Sure, I could point them to some blog or I could go research and do it myself and just walk them through the whole process. I’m a firm believer of living your life in the trenches and not just writing about stuff or being some fat kid with a neck beard in your mom’s basement writing about health. I want to be out there living it and trying this stuff out.
Dr. Pompa:
Now that’s where you and I are the same. I got to do it and then I got to talk about it. Ben, you bring balance to me. I look to you and go, oh, thank God, I have balance. I do all of these things. I’m always researching, going and going. Then I see Ben and I’m like, oh, man, my life’s balanced, man. All right, man. I want to bring something here. I just so respect—as a matter of fact, you’re speaking at my seminar. This seminar’s about fasting. You’ve been doing many types of fasting for a long time like I have. You’re going to be bringing the exercise portion around the seminar because we’re fasting these people. We’re intermittent fasting them and you’re going to show them some exercises to do while they’re fasting in the fasting state to maximize the hormones, the growth hormones.
This is probably part of that conversation but many people—I said that people that are on my show, they’re looking for their health. We do have exercise enthusiasts as well. Gaining muscle, we don’t talk a lot about that because everyone wants to lose weight, yet gaining muscle is a part of losing fat. Gaining muscle is a part of regaining health. Gaining muscle is a big deal for people who are really sick. Again, we already mentioned that there’s some things that we need to do that are a little different than some of the things that we talk about on the show to actually gain muscle. As a trained athlete, you need to do these things. Let’s bring it to a health perspective. What are some tips on how we gain muscle, even just for health and perhaps performance?
Ben:
Yeah, the caveat here is that we know that muscle takes energy to carry. It takes energy to cool. It requires a higher amount of endogenous antioxidant production. Even when present in large amounts, especially in people like bodybuilders is associated with things like cardiomegaly or left ventricular hypertrophy or health issues that have basically decreased both the quality and quantity of life. Getting more muscle is not the goal but most of the research studies that are good that look on muscle primarily focus on the quality of the muscle, meaning the power to mass ratio, the mitochondrial density of the muscle, the functional capacity of the muscle.
The idea is not to build more muscle per se, just have added bulk but rather to maintain muscle quality. Then also, there are certain things that are directly correlated with longevity such as grip strength is a perfect example. The amount of weight that you can deadlift with a hex bar is another one that’s a good example of a marker of longevity. There are certain things that you can certainly track versus just, I want to put on as much muscle as possible. Look at me, I’m not a big old muscular guy but every shred of muscle that I have is very functional because that’s the way that I train.
Dr. Pompa:
If you looked at Ben and I, we’re lean but our muscle is rock hard when you touch us. We’re not talking about the bodybuilder. Hypertrophy is not normal and it’s not the same type of muscle. This is what we’re talking about.
Ben:
Which I used to do, by the way. I used to weigh 215 pounds to put that in perspective for you. I’m 175 pounds now. I was 215 pounds, 3% body fat. Right now, I’m 175 pounds about 7% to 8% body fat but that was because I was a competitive body builder. I would eat anywhere from 6,000 to 8,000 calories a day. I would spend about two hours a day in the gym doing a lot of different types of weights.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way folks, you will die early putting that many calories and that much protein in.
Ben:
Yeah, yeah. It’s kind of funny. You’d go to these body building shows and people look like Adonises from a distance. Then you get up close and they’re just inflammatory firestorms. They look like the grandma from Something About Mary as far as their skin quality. You hop on an elevator in these Vegas body building shows and the elevator just smells like ass because everybody’s just chock-full of whey protein and energy bars and all this [00:34:29] and SIBO. It’s nasty, nasty. Fast-track to an early death even though you might look good with your shirt off. Anyway, as far as building and/or maintain muscle, there is this concept of the minimal effective dose of exercise.
I’m a big fan of that, especially for people who aren’t trying to put on muscle or maintain muscle for the purposes of athletic competition but instead for the purposes of health and longevity. Some of the programs that I really like for this, number one would be this concept of super-slow training. Super-slow training can not only produce a really good cardiovascular response so that you are getting all the cardio benefits of exercise while at the same time you’re weight training. It’s really good at maintaining or building muscle with a decreased risk of injury. Probably, one of the—
Dr. Pompa:
What do you mean by slow? How you move a rep?
Ben:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Slow?
Ben:
Yeah. If you read a book like Doug McGuff's Body by Science, one to two times a week, you train anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes using primarily 5 different exercises. Some kind of a chest press, some kind of a shoulder press, some kind of a seated row, some kind of a pull-down, and some kind of leg press. This is typically how I work out when I travel because there’s a very low amount of cognitive will power or complexity to a routine like this. I can do it with either free weights or ideally with weight machines in a very controlled environment in just about any gym or health club or hotel on the face of the planet.
Dr. Pompa:
Anyone listening can do it. It’s actually a safer way to move. Tell us how you do it.
Ben:
It’s quite simple. It’s single set to failure. For example, you would start with the chest press. You would go about 20 to 30 seconds up, 20 to 30 seconds back. We’re moving. If you were watching a video right now, it’s really slow. You’re trying to breathe through your nose, this deep meditative-style breathing. As you get towards the end of the set and a lot of lactic acid builds up, you’ll start to breathe through your mouth. You’ll feel your heart rate go through the roof. Your blood pressure will increase. By the time you finish that one single set, you just feel exhausted.
Then you move on to the pull-down. Then you move on to the shoulder press. Then you move on to the seated row and then you finish with the leg press. You have chess press, pull down. I like to alternate between the pushing and the pulling. Shoulder press and then seated row, and then leg press. The modification that I make for a lot of people who want to get a little bit more of a cardio stimulus is you’ll finish that whole routine which is going to take you about 12 to 15 minutes or so, and then you throw in about 2 minutes of cardio like an air Assault bike or rowing machine or anything like that at the very end of that set. For my more advanced athletes or exercise enthusiasts, we’ll do two or three rounds of that even though one is the minimal effective dose. That type of routine, even if just done twice a week is fantastic.
Dr. Pompa:
I love that. I love that because people listening, they don’t have time. That would literally take 15 minutes, 10 minutes to do, right?
Ben:
Right. It’s super quick and you can also purchase exercise equipment for your home that makes this really easy. For example, there’s a guy named John Jaquish that makes the X3 Bar, which are really high-quality elastic bands. A very short bar that acts similar to an Olympic weightlifting bar and a little platform. You can simulate all these different weight training machines. These elastic bands can be set at a pretty high intensity so that you’re simulating hundreds of pounds with an elastic band.
There are also more advanced devices that are more expensive but that have machines that walk you through this. ARX Fit is an example of a company that makes these machines where it will walk you through the super-slow routine. If you do a chest press and you press out really slow, rather than you just bringing the weight back really slow, it pushes back against you. There are all sorts of ways to hack this, so to speak. What’s that?
Dr. Pompa:
How much are some of these home things? What do they cost?
Ben:
The X3 Bar set up would be 300 or 400 bucks. An ARX Fit, you’re looking at 3 to 4 grand. It depends on what you want. Ultimately though, the only thing that, in my opinion, you miss out on when you’re doing a routine like that is something that has been shown to increase longevity and to increase muscle quality, and that would be the whole explosive, powerful type of movement. It’s my opinion that to maintain good functional fitness into your later years of life especially, you can’t neglect occasionally moving quickly.
Dr. Pompa:
Like jumps, where instead of going really slow, you’re jumping.
Ben:
Jumps, hops, moving quickly, doing the movements more explosively. Because of that, what I tend to do with the folks who I’m trying to give the minimal effective dose of exercise for maintaining or building muscle or increasing the quality of the muscle, we’ll do a workout like the one that I’ve just described twice a week. For example, on a Monday and a Friday. Then two more times a week like a Wednesday and a Saturday, we’ll do something like the 7-minute New York Times workout 1 or 2 times through. We’re talking about 7 to 14 minutes. That involves 14 different exercises, 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off.
You can just Google 7-minute New York Times workout and you’d see that there’s good research behind it. You’re just going 30 seconds as many pushups as you can do, 10 seconds off. 30 seconds as many bodyweight squats as you can do, 10 seconds off. 30 seconds as many lunge jumps as you can do, 10 seconds off, so on and so forth. That works really well for maintaining a little bit more of the explosive aspects of the muscle. Now, when I’m working with someone, I also like to pull out some of the things that have been shown to maintain muscle without stressing the body quite as much. Perfect example of that is heat stress.
Most of the people I work with, I typically have in a sauna anywhere from two to five times a week. Not only because of the fantastic effect that that has on nitric oxide and blood flow and cardiovascular health, but also because of its ability to create a lot of heat shock proteins and a type of cellular resilience that has been proven in research to allow for muscle maintenance in addition to things like red blood cell production. That’s very simple. It works better if you do it post-exercise. What I like about the sauna is if you’re big into reading, self-education, magazines, stuff like that, you can just save all that for the sauna.
If you like yoga practice or you like to meditate or you like to do holotropic breathwork, anything, you can just step into a sauna and do it. I’m a big fan of an infrared sauna just because it heats the tissue a little bit more thoroughly. You can get lower EMF infrared saunas. You can also use a dry sauna at the gym. The steam sauna is just because you never know the source of the water, I’m a little more careful of. Ultimately, I think that a super-slow routine combined with an explosive routine and then you throw heat into the mix by frequently exposing yourself to the stressors of heat. That’s a really good one, two, three combo for muscle.
Like I mentioned, I’m also a big fan of cold just because you get conversion of your white adipose tissue into brown fat. There’s not a lot of evidence that it’s going to help to build muscle but it pairs really well and works perfectly with the scenario that I’ve just described. In many cases, what I’ll do is a super-slow routine then some heat and then finish up with a quick cold shower, a quick cold soak.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s exactly what I did today. I did my workout. I went in the sauna and I then went into a cold shower. Just boom, boom, boom, one after the other.
Ben:
Right, and interestingly, if you fast for—we’ll talk about this more at the conference. Even just fasting for an hour or two hours post-workout, you get an increase in growth hormone. You get an increase in testosterone. You get a pretty good fat loss effect. Despite popular culture and fitness telling you that you’ve got to drop that bar from the last rep and rush off to suck down your whey protein—
Dr. Pompa:
We used to do that. I remember the old days. The old days, we did that, Ben. 30 minutes, right, we had to get the protein in.
Ben:
The only reason to do that would be if you’re—let’s say you’re a high school football player trying to put on 30 pounds or a body builder like I used to be, trying to put on copious amounts of muscle or you are doing a two-a-day. It takes about eight hours for glycogen restoration to occur if you’re eating ad libitum according to appetite. If you’re going to exercise again—let’s say you are an athlete and you’re doing a two-a-day or in high school and you’ve got a sport in the morning, sport in the evening, then it does actually pay off to eat post-workout because you get that liver and muscle glycogen replenishment occurring faster than that eight-hour window. Unless you’re going to work out again, within eight hours or less, there’s no reason to eat after the workout. The advantages of not eating seem to outweigh the advantages of face-stuffing post-workout.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, yeah. What about amino acids? You mentioned them. That could be a big help for people who need to put on muscle. Promote yours. My kids take your amino acids. They swear by them.
Ben:
I should clarify that leucine, isoleucine, and valine are the three amino acids that you’re going to find in most amino acid supplements. Those are your branched-chain amino acids. Unfortunately, and leucine in particular is a culprit for this, that can cause a high amount of glycemic variability and a larger release of insulin compared to what would be a more expensive solution but a more anabolic solution and also a solution that’s less likely to spike blood glucose because of the balance of the amino acids. That would be essential amino acids which contain nine of the essential amino acids the body can’t make, including those branched-chains, leucine, isoleucine, and valine but combined with six other amino acids that allow us—
Dr. Pompa:
Your product has that balance.
Ben:
You maintain an anabolic state without necessarily increasing blood glucose. That’s what I like to maintain, blood levels of amino acids if you’re going to workout hard in a fasted state. The other cool thing is that, when you have high blood levels of amino acids and you’re doing a workout, especially a hard workout, those help to out-compete tryptophan from crossing the blood-brain barrier. They stave off some of the central nervous system fatigue that can occur especially during a fasted workout. For a variety of reasons and especially for people who want to maintain or build muscle, I am a fan of doing your workout in a fasted state.
If you want to have your cake and eat it too, so to speak, to use something like essential amino acids before or after or both so that you maintain high blood levels of amino acids without necessarily having all the calories of whey, protein or steak or something like that. I first started to use these way back when I was doing Ironman triathlon. 2013, I started to go into a really deep ketosis. As an endurance athlete, I really wanted to figure out how to reduce the gut fermentation from a high-carbohydrate throughput and also reduce a lot of the glycemic variability and inflammation that can occur with sugar and fructose and maltodextrin, and all these things that endurance athletes consume.
I started using during my Ironman triathlons, high amount of salts, magnesium and potassium, et cetera. High amount of amino acids in the form of these essential amino acids. High amount of MCTs and later when they came to market, ketones and a very low amount of carbohydrates like UCAN SuperStarch or a dextrose-based fuel that was less fermentable. I would consume one quarter of the amount of carbohydrates that most of my peers were consuming during something like an Ironman but I would instead use oil in the form of medium-chain triglycerides or ketones and then amino acids and electrolytes to fill in the gaps. I was able to compete at the same level or even faster without eating all the carbohydrates. These things work really well for things like endurance competition also.
Dr. Pompa:
You mentioned the resistant starch. I mean, athletes have been using that. It definitely worked. What products do you have on your—let me bring you back to focus for our viewers. What three products, if you’re someone who wants to gain muscle and maybe there’s a different set of products for performance. Let’s talk about what two or three products for those who want to gain muscle, even for health reasons, what would you recommend?
Ben:
Let’s leave out the stuff people already know about like protein and creatine and a lot of these horses that get kicked to death. I would say the biggest ones would be for growth hormone and growth factor without using expensive hormone replacement injections like Ipamorelin or synthetic growth hormones, it would be colostrum.
Dr. Pompa:
You have a product. I actually took it. I loved it by the way.
Ben:
I’ve got a great colostrum at Kion. We get it from Western Washington Farm. Organic, grass-fed, grass-finished goats, super clean product. I’ve got a lot of athletes that use that to reduce gut permeability during exercise. A lot of people with leaky gut use it to down-regulate zonulin and heal the gut. Then people use it for this growth hormone and growth factor effect. That would be one. It would be colostrum. What would stack really well with that are essential aminos in the ratio about 10 to 20 grams per day. Then a final one that falls under the radar but that I think has a lot of good research behind it is the combo of HMB and ATP.
We’re not going to talk about SARMs and peptides and a lot of these more advanced injectable strategies. For example, there’s a company called Millennium Sports. I do have a pretty link to the—I had them put together this as a stack for me. I think it’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/atp. I told them, look, there’s all this research. I don’t want to necessarily at this point go down the rabbit hole of producing this for Kion, so I just send people to their website. They have HMB with ATP and that dosed pre-workout, especially if you’re using the amino acids and at some point during the day, preferably on an empty stomach, taking colostrum, you can get a large amount of muscle mass or muscle maintenance without increasing the amount of calories that you consume.
Dr. Pompa:
Which we know is not good for your health. My kids take the product. You turned them on to it, the HMB.
Ben:
I’m a fan of creatine. I’m a fan of protein but amino acids, colostrum, and then an HMB-ATP combo, in my opinion, that’s one of the best stacks that you can use.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that’s some great advice for those who want to put on muscle, no doubt because there’s a lot of unhealthy ways as we mentioned that people get sucked in. I love your little biohacks. The little tricks that you’re doing. I love the workouts, man. That’s easy for people. Mixing up the slow with the burst in the week and neither take a lot of time. Everybody can do it.
Ben:
I’ll throw in one more tip for you. At the top of the hour, I have another interview I’m going to have to get on. I want to throw in another tip for you. That would be, I think everybody should own a hex bar. I have a hex bar. I keep it in the room next to the office and I’ll simply go in there a few times during the day and do a cold lift, meaning that you just have that thing loaded up with as much weight as you can lift for about five reps and you rip that hex bar off the ground and set it down. If you send your body a stimulus throughout the day, a few times during the day, that it has to lift something heavy, you can get an incredible amount of muscle maintenance or muscle building even in the absence of a formal, structured workout.
Dr. Pompa:
We’re set up to do that.
Ben:
Our ancestors moving a heavy rock every now and again. The hex bar allows you to do that to protect the low back, to activate the glutes. It’s a perfect addition to the toolbox of anybody who wants to maintain or build muscle, and it’s so simple. You just get a hex bar, load it up with weight, keep that bad boy in the garage or in the basement or wherever it happens to fit. It’s got a pretty small footprint. You just have a rule that three to five times a day when you step over that thing, you’re going to do five reps.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s awesome. Ben, thanks for the information, man. We love you, dude. We love you on the show. Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com and you can find those products that Ben discussed. You write a great blog, man. You write a great article. People love following you. I think you have the number one fitness blog in the country, if I’m not mistaken.
Ben:
Yeah, I try to write good stuff. The last article that came out this week was, “Sunlight Makes You Skinny, Blue Light Makes You Fat.” I think anybody who wants to hack light in their environment needs to go read that article. I try to put out stuff like that that’s helpful and that contains a ton of information that a lot of fitness blogs aren’t talking about. Bengreenfieldfitness.com is where I got that stuff and then Kion, K-I-O-N. Dan can give you guys a link for that.
Dr. Pompa:
We’ll put up those links for Ben. Practitioners watching, November 2nd through the 4th, I’ll put in a video to watch if you want to know more about that. Ben’s going to be on stage a lot because he is running. He’s going to be teaching you some of these things and more at the seminar. How to Bio Hack your Hormones, man. This is key. In a fasting state, exercising. You’re going to see that at the seminar, practitioners. Watch the video. You’ll get it on the link. Thanks, Ben. We’ll see you—
Ben:
Awesome. Thanks, Dan. Pleasure, man.
Dr. Pompa:
I want to give thanks to one of our sponsors, CytoDefend. Look, at a time like this, I think that our immune system and keeping our immune system operating now is more important than ever. I can also tell you that I pay attention to the things that keep my immune system on par and healthy. So glad that CytoDefend is one of our sponsors here on Cell TV and it’s a product that I use, my family uses, and hopefully, you’ll check it out. By the way, you can check it out with the link right here below. If you want to try a free bottle, you can actually get a free bottle. Just pay the shipping and I think you’ll reorder after that but check it out.
Ashley:
If you’re listening to this podcast and want to access the amazing CytoDefend product Dr. Pompa just mentioned, please visit, freeimmunity.com. Again, that’s freeimmunity.com.
That’s it for this week. The materials and content within this podcast are intended as general information only and they’re not to be considered as substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you would like to purchase some of the supplements mentioned on the show, please visit the site, asseenonchtv.com and use the code, CHTV15 for 15% off. Again, that’s asseenonchtv.com. Use the code, CHTV15 for 15% off. As always, thanks for listening.
